Essay Undergraduate 1,175 words

Mastery Over Nature and the Exotic Animal Trade

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Abstract

This paper examines humanity's historical drive to master and control the natural world, with particular focus on the Adelaide Zoo in South Australia as a case study. Drawing primarily on Kay Anderson's analysis of culture and nature at the Adelaide Zoo, the paper traces the evolution of animal captivity from ancient Roman spectacles and royal menageries to modern zoological gardens. It explores how zoos function as culturally constructed spaces that reinforce human dominance over nature, shape visitor perceptions of the natural world, and serve broader ideological functions rooted in rationalism, dualism, and colonial logic. The paper also considers the emotional and psychological responses of zoo visitors and concludes with a reflection on the zoo's social value for children and society.

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What makes this paper effective

The paper grounds its broad conceptual claims in a specific, well-documented case study — the Adelaide Zoo — giving abstract ideas about human dominance over nature a concrete geographical anchor.
It uses Kay Anderson's scholarly framework consistently throughout, building its argument by layering quotations and paraphrases to create analytical depth rather than relying on unsupported assertions.
The historical narrative tracing animal captivity from Roman gladiatorial contests through royal menageries to modern zoos gives the argument a logical developmental arc.

Key academic technique demonstrated

The paper demonstrates sustained engagement with a single primary scholarly source (Anderson, 1995), showing how to use one theoretically rich text as a lens through which to analyze a broader phenomenon. By returning repeatedly to Anderson's framework — zoological gardens as culturally contrived spaces encoding human control — the paper builds a coherent, text-supported argument rather than surveying many sources superficially.

Structure breakdown

The paper opens with a brief conceptual introduction establishing the theme of human mastery over animals, then introduces the Adelaide Zoo as its focal setting. Subsequent sections analyze the zoo environment, visitor responses, and the pre-zoo history of animal captivity. The penultimate section synthesizes the historical and ideological trajectory from menageries to modern zoos. The conclusion steps back to reflect personally on the zoo's value for children and closes with a wry philosophical observation about human-animal hierarchies.

Introduction: Human Fascination with Exotic Animals

Humankind has always had a fascination with nature — and specifically with animals in nature — and even more specifically with conquering or gaining mastery over animals. The exotic animal has been the focus of great human aspiration. The reasons for this are varied: some individuals obtain exotic animals for their own pleasure, and as examined in this study, there is also a desire to obtain exotic animals so that human beings can experience the animals of nature firsthand.

The setting examined in this study is the Adelaide Zoo, located in Adelaide, South Australia. The work of Kay Anderson, entitled "Culture and Nature at the Adelaide Zoo: At the Frontier of Human Geography," reports that in the suburban backyard, people unknowingly "make their more routine interventions in nature by clearing ground and arranging space for 'gardens'; they simultaneously create 'habitats' in which some species of bird and animal life thrive while others lose out." (Anderson, 1995)

The Zoo Environment and Cultural Construction of Nature

The suburb is reported by Anderson to have become an ecosystem of its own. However, just as people create habitats for animals, Anderson states that they also "often tend to misrecognize as 'natural' the settings that have been deliberately set aside for human recreation and contemplation." (Anderson, 1995) Included, according to Anderson, are "the parks and reserves where an ill-defined and unspecified 'nature' has been converted into cultural experience and spiritual commodity. It is the metropolitan space of the western world's zoo-logical gardens, however, that people encounter a nature that has been most complexly and culturally contrived by, and for, humans." (Anderson, 1995)

Anderson reports that zoological gardens are spaces in which "an illusion is created from scratch and re-presented back to human audiences in a cultural performance and achievement." (Anderson, 1995) Nature, though remote and distant from human cultural society, is described by Anderson as being "in some sense at least, socially constructed." (Anderson, 1995)

The zoo is inclusive of a wide range of species from the natural world, most of which are generally not encountered by people in the wild. In addition, the display of these animals is said to "cater to cultural demand and public expectations about animals and the world regions for which exhibits are made to emblematically stand." (Anderson, 1995) Zoos attract large numbers of paying visitors: the United States, for example, is reported to have had 154 zoos and aquariums as of 1993, accredited by the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, with more than 100 million individuals visiting these parks annually. (Anderson, 1995, paraphrased)

Tarpy (1993) notes that this figure exceeds the combined attendance at all major-league football and basketball games. The figure below shows the "Plan of the Zoological Gardens" from 1898.

Figure 1: Plan of the Zoological Gardens (1898)

Human Responses to Animals in Zoos

Anderson notes that some zoos achieve higher levels of success than others, particularly in terms of attracting visitors. The response of human beings to animals in zoos is reported to be "wide-ranging and profoundly ambiguous." (Anderson, 1995) According to surveys, the reactions of human beings to zoos "typically combine excitement, fear, awe, sadness and nostalgia, with unease about the captivity of animals." (Adams et al., 1991; Townsend, 1988, cited in Anderson, 1995)

Anderson reports that the zoo "ultimately tell[s] us stories about boundary-making activities on the part of humans." (1995) The metropolitan zoo in the western world is, according to Anderson, a "space where humans engage in cultural self-definition against a variably constructed and opposed nature." (1995) Zoos use animals as the medium through which they inscribe a "sense of distance from the loosely defined realm that has come to be called 'nature'." (Anderson, 1995)

3 Locked Sections · 520 words remaining

49% of this paper shown

Purposes of Animals Prior to the Modern Zoo · 130 words

"Animals kept for labor, worship, and sport"

From Menageries to Zoological Gardens · 270 words

"Royal menageries evolve into public zoos"

Summary and Conclusion · 120 words

"Zoo's social value and human-animal hierarchy"

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Key Concepts in This Paper

Exotic Animals Adelaide Zoo Cultural Construction Human Mastery Zoological Gardens Menageries Animal Captivity Colonial Australia Nature vs. Culture Rationalist Control